New metal recycling plant in Delfzijl is absolute world first

In Farmsum, close to Delfzijl, Purified Metal Company's (PMC) state-of-the-art metal recycling plant is currently being built. When it is completed in mid-2020, the Dutch company will have the first production site in the world where a unique, patented and highly innovative process is used to recycle contaminated steel scrap into a high-quality raw material for the steel industry. The emphasis here is on the processing of materials containing asbestos.

The seed for the prestigious project, in which both governments and various public and private parties are investing, was sown around 2011. At the time, PMC founders Nathalie van de Poel, Bert Bult and Jan Henk Wijma realized that train scrap contaminated with asbestos was ending up as unsaleable and, above all, unwanted material in designated landfills. "Tens of thousands of tons of steel containing asbestos are cleaned or dumped in the Netherlands every year," said CEO Wijma. "Materials that come from trains, but also from industrial plants, buildings and drilling rigs, for example. This fact gave us the idea of processing such waste through a unique recycling process. In this process, the asbestos structure is destroyed so that it no longer poses a danger. But other harmful substances with which the steel is contaminated, such as chromium 6 and mercury, are also captured or neutralized. At the same time, the steel is prepared for reuse as a premium raw material. This is done by first melting it in a steel bath at 1,550°C and then transforming it into small rolls called Purified Metal Blocks."

Jan Henk Wijma, CEO of Purified Metal Company
(Image: Stephan Jansen Photographers).

Sustainable

PMC's processing and transportation of contaminated steel scrap will not only be done extremely safely and responsibly as of mid-2020, it will also deliver significant benefits on the sustainability front, it turns out. "First of all, much of the discarded steel scrap no longer ends up in landfills," Wijma explains. "Furthermore, thanks to our activity, 150,000 tons of CO2 per year are saved compared to the production of steel from iron ore. A saving equivalent to the annual emissions of 45,000 passenger cars." Wijma expects PMC to be able to process about 150,000 tons of asbestos per year after the plant is commissioned. "Our process is economically driven. That is, we accept material at the gatefee rate that must also be paid at the landfill. The cost relative to landfill is not increased. On the other hand, PMC also gets a revenue from the recycled, clean steel. This is also necessary to cover the high costs in the advanced process, including of energy and additives."

From contaminated steel to clean raw material.

Multidisciplinary collaboration

The realization of the soon-to-be completely closed plant has been hard work over the past four years. In doing so, the three founders and co-initiator and investor Jansen Recycling Group from Dordrecht, together with several internationally leading parties, went through several phases and all aspects of the business case had to be demonstrated in order to get the financing. This succeeded in July 2018, after which the contract was immediately awarded for construction. Contractor Visser & Smit Bouw (part of VolkerWessels), supported by Royal HaskoningDHV and the German engineering firm Küttner GmbH have been working since then to realize the innovative plant on a turnkey basis. The first pile went into the ground in early March and, as planned, the handover to Purified Metal Company will follow in July next year.